If you’ve had your chimney inspected recently, you may have heard something about smoke chamber parging or reparging. If you’re confused, you’re not alone. This is a relatively common process in an aging chimney, especially those with historic roots. In this post, we’ll take a look at what the fireplace smoke chamber in your Rochester home is, what reparging is, and how having your chimney parged can help improve performance and safety.
Is it Time for Smoke Chamber Reparging?
Let’s start with a few definitions. The smoke chamber is the area above your fireplace but below your chimney. It connects these two components by slowly reducing the size of the top of the fireplace to the size of the chimney, allowing smoke to be channeled into your flue and then up and out of your home through your chimney.
Parging or reparging is the process of smoothing out any corners inside of your smoke chamber and ensuring that any masonry joints are covered. This is a particular concern in older chimneys, where a process called corbelling was used to reduce the size of the smoke chamber, often leaving corners and masonry joints exposed, areas that are particularly good at collecting creosote and particularly bad at retaining a strong draft in your chimney.
These areas can also allow smoke and carbon monoxide to enter your home, especially the exposed masonry joints. Parging or reparging coats these problem areas with either a cast-in-place masonry compound to cover the rough surfaces, or a sprayed-on coating that covers the corbelled sections and any other exposed surfaces that can be problematic.
This process is important for two reasons. The first is that creosote can build up readily on the exposed corbelled areas, which can lead to a chimney fire. This is because creosote, a tar-like compound that is highly flammable, builds up on the rough surfaces and can very easily catch fire. Second is the issues that a corbelled chimney may have with drafting properly. If combustion gases do not have a smooth surface to rise through, it can make it difficult to draw fresh oxygen into the fire and can cause smoke and deadly carbon monoxide to back up into your home.
Fireplace smoke chamber reparging provides Rochester homeowners with a smoother interior smoke chamber surface, providing a better draft and superior safety and performance. If you have concerns about your smoke chamber needing parging, the experienced professional team at Four Winds Chimney in Rochester offers fireplace smoke chamber reparging, maintenance and repair. Why not give us a call today to see what we can do for you?
